Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia

Ts'ui-jung Liu has worked at Academia Sinica, Taiwan, for more than 30 years and was elected an Academician in 1996. She retired in January 2014 and is currently an adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica. She has published three monographs and more than 70 articles related to economic history, population history, and environmental history.James Beattie is Director of the Historical Research Unit at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, where he teaches imperial, environmental, garden, and world history. He has published three monographs, co-edited three books, and written over 50 articles and chapters on topics in imperial environmental history, history of science, garden history, and art history. He is Founding Editor of International Review of Environmental History.

• Introduction: Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia: Perspectives from Environmental History; James Beattie and Ts'ui-jung Liu.- PART I: MODERNIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES.- 1. Agriculture, Population and Environment in Late Imperial China; E. N. Anderson.- 2. Chinese Migrants and Colonial Development in the British Empire, 1860s-1920s: A Case Study; James Beattie.- PART II: WATERSCAPES: DEVELOPMENT, MODERNIZATION AND SOCIETY.- 3. Dike-based Communities between Water and Sand: The Sand-land Environmental System in Dongchong, South China, 1720s-1980s; Jianxiong Ma.- 4. Waterscape and Social Transformations in Southern Taiwan: The Damming of Mudan Creek; Shao-hua Liu and Shu-min Huang.- PART III: LANDSCAPE COMMODIFICATION.- 5. The Role of the Shin Nihon Hakkei in Redrawing Japanese Attitudes to Landscape; Thomas Jones.- 6. The Development of Cinchona Cultivation and 'Kina Gaku' in the Japanese Empire, 1912-45; Ya-wen Ku.- 7. The Energetics of Militarized Landscapes: The Ecology of War in Henan, 1938-50; Micah S. Muscolino.- PART IV: REACTING TO DEVELOPMENT.- 8. Environmental Non-Government Organizations in China since the 1970s; Sheng Fei.- 9. Taiwan's Land Use after World War II: An Ecological Modernization Approach; Hsin-Hsun Huang, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, and Shih-Jung Hsu.- 10. Material Fetters and Spiritual Transcendence: Zhuang Zi and Environmental Thought; Yim-tze Kwong.

A fascinating buffet of chapters on East Asian environmental history, exploring, within Chinese and Japanese cultural contexts, the problem of how appropriately to link the multifaceted environment with the rest of history. Ts'ui-jung Liu and James Beattie have, as editors, done an impressively well-judged job of bringing together cultural depth with a critical awareness of current theoretical insights.' - Mark Elvin, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK "This wide-ranging collaboration is packed with material that will intrigue, excite, and inform readers at all levels of scholarship. Those interested in East Asia, modernization, and long-term environmental change will find tremendous utility in the chapters assembled here." - Edward D. Melillo, Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Amherst College, USA